Rights management and enforcement is highly desirable in connection with digital content such as a digital presentation, a digital audio and/or video work, a digital application or the like, where such digital content is to be distributed to one or more users. Typical modes of distribution include tangible devices such as a magnetic (floppy) disk, a magnetic tape, an optical (compact) disk (CD), etc., and intangible media such as an electronic bulletin board, an electronic network, the Internet, etc. Upon being received by the user on a computing device thereof, such user can render the content with the aid of an appropriate operating system on the computing device.
Typically, an author and/or publisher of the content wishes to distribute such content to each of many users or recipients in exchange for a license fee or some other consideration. Such author/publisher or other similar entity (hereinafter, “publisher”), given the choice, would likely wish to restrict what each user can do with such published content. For example, the publisher would like to restrict the user from copying and re-distributing such content to a second user, at least in a manner that denies the publisher a license fee from such second user.
However, after publication has occurred, such publisher has very little if any real control over the content. This is especially problematic in view of the fact that practically every personal computer includes the software and hardware necessary to make an exact digital copy of such content, and to download such exact digital copy to a write-able magnetic or optical disk, or to send such exact digital copy over a network such as the Internet to any destination.
Of course, as part of a transaction wherein the content is distributed, the publisher may require the user/recipient of the content to promise not to re-distribute such content in an unwelcome manner. However, such a promise is easily made and easily broken. A publisher may attempt to prevent such re-distribution through any of several known security devices, usually involving encryption and decryption. However, and without more, it can be a relatively simple manner for a mildly determined user to decrypt the encrypted content, save such content in an un-encrypted form, and then re-distribute same.
Rights Management (RM) and enforcement architectures and methods have previously been provided to allow the controlled operation of arbitrary forms of digital content, where such control is flexible and definable by the publisher of such content. Typically, a digital license is provided to operate the content, where the content cannot be actuated in a meaningful manner without such license. For example, it may be the case that at least a portion of the content is encrypted and the license includes a decryption key for decrypting such encrypted portion. In addition, it may be the case that the license is tied to a user, a computing device, an operating system on the computing device, or some combination thereof (hereinafter, ‘platform’), and such computing device includes a security feature that ensures that the terms of the license are honored. Notably, by being tied to a particular platform, the license cannot be employed to render the corresponding content on any other platform.
Such a digital license typically includes a set of rights and conditions that govern use of the corresponding content on the computing device. Thus, each license sets forth policies that grant certain rights for specified functionality. With digital licenses, then, a publisher can provide a user with different rights with regard to a piece of content by providing different licenses corresponding to such different rights. For example, the publisher may wish to provide a full-feature license at a higher price and a limited-feature license at a lower price.
In the case where a license is tied to a particular platform, such tying can be achieved by any of several features. As one example, it may be the case that each platform has a corresponding ID, that the license includes a platform ID therein, and that the license is not employed to render the corresponding content on the particular platform unless it is confirmed that the ID of the platform matches the platform ID in the license. As another example, it may be the case that information that must be obtained from the license such as for example a content key for decrypting the corresponding encrypted content is itself encrypted according to a key that is only available from the particular platform. In either example, and again, by being tied to a particular platform, the license cannot be employed to render the corresponding content on any other platform.
As may be appreciated, although one or more licenses may be tied to a particular platform, there may be valid and/or justifiable reasons why a user of such licenses should be able to transfer or ‘migrate’ same to another platform. As one example, it may be that the platform includes a first computer of a user and the user wishes to migrate the rendering rights incumbent in the licenses from the first computer to a second computer. As another example, it may be that the platform includes a first operating system on a computer of a user and the user wishes to migrate the rendering rights incumbent in the licenses from the first operating system to a second operating system on the computer. In either instance, the publisher that issued each license is presumably not adversely affected by the migrate of such license from one platform to another, and the user who has expended some amount of cost in acquiring each license does not suffer the virtual loss of such license merely because of a change of platform.
However, it is to be appreciated that allowing a license to be migrated from one platform to another must be done in a manner to ensure that a user cannot abuse the ability to migrate such license from a first platform to a second platform. In particular, such user must not be allowed to copy the license to the second platform and perhaps other platforms. That is, the user upon migrating the license from the first platform to the second platform should after such migration have the license tied to the second platform only, and not to the first platform or to any other platform.
Accordingly, a need exists for a method and mechanism by a digital license is migrated from being operable to render a corresponding piece of content on a first computing platform to being operable to render the piece of content on a second computing platform. More particularly, a need exists for a method and mechanism by which the license is un-tied from the first platform and re-tied to the second platform, and for ensuring that the license cannot be employed at the first platform or any other platform after being migrated to the second platform.